Sunday, December 16, 2018

Hello trombone geeks, here are two instruments from an early Chicago "maker," Richard Wunderlich:

Both instruments are made of brass with nickel trim, typical of high-quality instruments even today. The snake decorations on the slides are traditional to German horns, as are the thin bell brass, turned stays and ferrules, large bores, floating slide brace, and the nickel bell rim and leather valve hook of the bass horn. Most of these features have been dropped from modern instruments, however the large bore continues to be standard for orchestral trombones. Both instruments have tuning slides, water keys, and internal leadpipes, which are found on all modern trombones. The original mouthpieces are lost. Both horns are beautifully crafted, with seamed tubing throughout, and the attention to detail is stunning; you can make out the snakes' scales, eyes and nose holes, and fangs! And there are no manufacturing marks or crooked braces or sloppy original soldering anywhere. Wunderlich was an importer of instruments at the time but also employed immigrant workers from Germany, including the respected horn maker Carl Geyer. I do not know if these horns were imported whole or built from parts locally; the decorative styles and physical scale of the two are quite different, and they are made from different alloys, yet the snakes are identical.

The instrument on the left, a tenor trombone, is built in high pitch with a dual bore of .525/540 and an 8-inch bell. This bell is very thin and fragile and super-responsive, and the whole instrument is very lightweight. Its sound is intimate and colorful and voice-like and runs off the rails pretty quickly when confronted with forceful playing. The slide is surprisingly good. It's fun and instructive to play at home, but I can't envision a use in the modern ensemble. Almost every component is made from rolled and brazed metal sheet, even the ferrules and inside slide tubes! The brass (bronze?) components are oxidized to a delightful bluish brown.

The instrument pictured on the right is a "tenorbass" trombone. Its valve works well and is very comfortable on the thumb, however the small diameter of the rotor is the source of some restriction. It is built in low (modern) pitch with a bore of .508/.551 and a 9.5-inch bell. While pedal notes are quite playable, I think the valve is useful mostly in limiting the necessity of longer positions; the slide is fairly smooth in positions 1-4 but starts to drag in 5, and sixth position is awfully sticky. Seventh-position notes better not be followed up by others because you have to rattle the slide back in from that extreme distance and it completely upsets everything. A 'benefit" is that the player is unlikely to toss the slide because it gets stuck in seventh! Aside from this the instrument plays much like a modern large-bore instrument; free-blowing, with a big wide spready sound and you can really lean into it! I have been tempted to take this one to rehearsals, but aside from the slide problem, it's a struggle to get the right sort of core and projection on principal parts, and the high range is a little more precarious than I am willing to risk. I think it would work better for middle parts, or as a lightweight bass trombone. This bell has very nice engraving of a style that I have only seen on American horns:

Extremely similar engraving appears on a 1914 Holton, a 1915 Holton, and also on a 1912 Harry B. Jay in my collection (all Chicago horns); I suspect they were all done by the same person traveling from factory to factory.

As there are no serial numbers on the instruments, we cannot precisely date their manufacture, however Wunderlich conducted business from 1891 until 1916/17, when the U.S. entered WW1. It might be that anti-German sentiment at the time contributed to the company's demise. Richard Wunderlich himself is said to have gone on to work with Conn, and indeed in playing these instruments one can sense some of the qualities that were retained in the 78H and 88H of later years.

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Hello trombonists! Any of you know anything about this instrument? I have not been able to locate much on the web.

Made in or near Markneukirchen by the DDR conglomerate Weltklang, possibly as late as mid-1980's. It has a very small dual bore, around .440/.460, no leadpipe, no bell nut, no water valve, and minimally braced. And a tight scratchy slide. I believe the mouthpiece is original; it seems a perfect fit, small diameter and funnel-shaped. The horn has a clear, elegant sound and is very easy to overpower. I think it would be appropriate for Mozart Requiem, most choir accompaniments, maybe Brahms Symphonies. Especially with small ensembles.

Monday, February 5, 2018

A mid-80's Schwinn mountain bike, totally rebuilt multiple times. A good bike, bought new and owned by the same person all this time. Three cranksets worn out in the years I worked on it, also dozens of tires, four saddles, three forks, three wheel sets, many chains and freewheels and brake pads, etc. etc. I think not a single component was original to the bike. This rig survived numerous accidents, in weather of all types, on- and off-road, and was stolen and recovered at least once. The owner found a number of local "bike shops" who refused to work on it, who only wanted to sell him a new bike. "Too old," they said, "not worth the repair," they said, "can't get parts for it," they said. "Bull," I say. It's too bad, that kind of snobbery which is one of the things driving customers out of bike shops and onto the web. Or in some cases out of cycling entirely.